It will be the best phone for newbies and the most powerful phone for geeks.

Ubuntu is coming to phones near the end of 2013 or the beginning of 2014, as we reported earlier today. After the announcement, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth spoke to the media about why he thinks Ubuntu will be great on phones and, more specifically, why it will be better than Android.

Somewhat confusingly, Ubuntu has two phone projects. One of them is called "Ubuntu for Android," which allows Android smartphones to act as Ubuntu PCs when docked with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. The version of Ubuntu for phones announced today is just Ubuntu, no Android required, allowing devices to run Ubuntu in both the phone and PC form factor, with different interfaces optimized for the different screens. Canonical is keeping Ubuntu for Android around, even as it touts its own phone operating system as a better alternative.

The smartphone market is already dominated by iPhone and Android, with RIM losing prominence, Windows Phone making a charge at third place, and various other operating systems aiming for elusive name recognition. So why should carriers and handset makers warm to Ubuntu, and why should anyone buy an Ubuntu phone?

In short, Shuttleworth believes that Ubuntu will be more user-friendly for people who barely know how to use a smartphone, and he says it will offer a more powerful alternative to Android at the high end for several reasons, including Ubuntu's ability to operate across mobile devices and desktops (click here for more on the design of Ubuntu for phones.) Here are Shuttleworth's comments:

With regard to Android I think we have two strong stories. One is a really crisp user experience that was designed from the beginning with this full vision of convergence in mind. That is something that is really difficult to achieve with Android today. We know many people who have tried to create clamshell devices with Android and there are lots of reasons why they've struggled. We have very high regard for the Android team's capabilities but we have a different vision when it comes to the convergence story.

The feedback we've had from operators and in user testing is that for a crucial portion of the market, which is the [low-end] smartphone market, the users who today just essentially only make calls and send SMS, that Ubuntu offers a much easier and understandable path to grow those users toward using the Web and e-mail on their smartphones. That's very important for operators. At the low end of the market I think we have a real user advantage experience over Android.

At the high end we have the great fortune to be coming to market late, in the sense that Moore's Law has given us at least seven or eight generations of performance improvements since Android came to market and we've been able to take advantage of that. It's the full Linux, it's essentially Unix in your pocket. That means all the security stories that are true of desktop and server Ubuntu are true of the phone, it means the multi-user story is there, it means the application containment story is there, using Linux containers and virtualization. It means the parallel SMP [symmetric multi-processing] multi-core story is there from the beginning. You can do things with Ubuntu devices on the high end that just wouldn't be possible with Android.

Another advantage cited by Shuttleworth is the ability to run "native apps, whereas Android has the overhead of Java."

Shuttleworth spent much less time comparing Ubuntu to other operating systems, focusing on Android because it's the biggest competitor in the open source world and the most widely used smartphone OS, period. RIM and Microsoft are both "potent forces" with a "closed ecosystem," Shuttleworth said.

While there are other open phone operating systems, including Tizen, WebOS, and Firefox OS, Shuttleworth said Ubuntu will be unique in offering convergence across the phone and desktop. Besides users getting a full PC with their phone, developers will be able to submit applications to the Ubuntu Software Centre and have them be distributed to phones and desktops if they're compatible with both.

In addition to native applications, Ubuntu will allow the creation of Web apps that run independently of the browser and have their own access to system services. "For those who want to, we offer facilities for integration of Web apps into the environment that are richer than either Android or iOS and quite possibly even from Firefox OS," Shuttleworth said.

As for games, a very popular category of apps, Shuttleworth noted, "We have the great advantage that some of the significant game publishers have started to target Ubuntu in the past year, most notably Valve with Steam and also Unity, which is a game framework popular in the mobile world."

It's not Ubuntu for Android, but that's still a thing too

To be clear, Ubuntu for Android isn't going away, even though Canonical now has its own phone OS that doesn't use Android. "Ubuntu for Android" devices may even ship earlier than what we'll call pure Ubuntu phones for the sake of clarity. To add a bit more confusion, the earliest prototype of the pure Ubuntu for phones will be released as an image that can be installed instead of Android on a Galaxy Nexus device. But it's definitely not Ubuntu for Android. Got that?

Since both exist, and since Ubuntu for Android might hit store shelves first, Shuttleworth hopes it will pave the way for consumer acceptance of phone/PC hybrids.

"We're very excited about Ubuntu for Android. It continues to be a project we invest in," Shuttleworth said. "We have conversations [with hardware partners] that are bearing fruit. It's been a long and slow process, because it's essentially a category that doesn't exist today."

On another topic, Shuttleworth was asked how Ubuntu can avoid Android-like fragmentation that forces developers to make apps that target many different versions of Android and different hardware form factors.

While Ubuntu and Android are both open source, Ubuntu's development process happens much more publicly than Android's. Whether that makes controlling the ecosystem harder remains to be seen, but Shuttleworth expressed confidence.

"I think we have a good track record in Ubuntu of being open to participation from partners, competitors, community members," he said. "We'll also be quite opinionated about what constitutes an Ubuntu phone and we will do that so we can deliver security updates without breaking a user's device."

Shuttleworth also said Canonical has a plan for avoiding problems related to phones having wildly different form factors and screen sizes. He didn't provide much detail on what that plan is, but he said, "We will gracefully handle diversity and enable customization of brand and service and app frameworks in a way that is non-destructive to what developers want, which is an addressable market that keeps growing, rather than an addressable market that keeps getting more complicated."

If Android is "an addressable market that keeps getting more complicated," will developers flee to Ubuntu? That's a question we're a long way away from being able to answer, since the first step is getting carriers and hardware makers to make compatible devices in the first place.

Canonical's secret sauce in selling carriers on Ubuntu might lie in helping them sell their own services to end users. Carriers "care about brand and we know how to accommodate that," Shuttleworth said. "They care about their own content and we've essentially put their content on an equal footing with content from the ecosystem. The handset manufacturer or operator that has music, films, or other types of content can promote their content to their users or other users directly in a way that doesn't feel like a bolt-on or a sideshow."

Services offered by carriers and phone makers are usually just a waste of space at best. Whether good or not, they will be there on Ubuntu phones.

So who will sell them? Shuttleworth can't say yet, but he wants everyone to know that Canonical's secret talks with manufacturers are going well.

"We have in the last three months brought up the Ubuntu phone experience on a variety of devices and in all cases that was a crisp, clean and short process which really delighted both the silicon partners and handset manufacturers," he said. "That makes things easier for people who have existing Android phones in development to think about whether they want to put Ubuntu in certain markets or to reach certain audiences."

Canonical isn't stopping at phones. There will be Ubuntu tablets, too. But phones seem to be Canonical's top mobile priority, or at least the one that is the furthest along. "We think we can hold our own in what is going to be a very vibrant market," Shuttleworth said.

Promoted Comments

Fascinating, but the key problem will likely be differentiation from other mobile OSs out there. At this point, iOS and Android are largely similar to most consumers in most areas except for presentation. Given Microsoft's struggle in marketing Windows Phone (seriously, Live Tiles is why I'll switch from iOS or Android?), I see Canonical undergoing similar teething pains unless they have something really unique up their sleeve to differentiate themselves from iOS, Android, WP, Blackberry 10, Jolla, etc...

And again, you've got consumers tied down to Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store, so convincing those people who have built up a large library of purchased apps already to switch is another challenge.

I wish Canonical well, but with the base of people switching from old feature phones to smartphones shrinking month by month, I don't think they can count on mobile growth alone to get them where they want to be.

251 Reader Comments

It certainly sounds interesting but as time goes on I wonder if the market can sustain more than 2 OS's. I am a big fan of Windows phone and before that I enjoyed WebOS's refreshing take on mobile devices but the market has been rather resolute in not having more than 2 viable OS's.

I can certainly see where they are going with this and it would be a good way to for them to monetize their business and promote greater adoption of their desktop OS. I wish them luck I would like to think there is plenty of room for alternative phone OS's but this whole App Store model thing seems to have lowered those chances significantly as users become rather dependent on key apps and developers actually bringing them to multiple platforms.

Of course I hope I am wrong and other OS's continue to come out and show they too have a place.

I'd be a little more convinced of Ubuntu's utility for their low-end "phone calls and SMS" if their promotional pictures actually showed us how you'd make a phone call.

Also, I'd be curious to know what the overlap between low-end feature phone users and Linux desktop users is because it seems odd to target this population (one of the perks of Ubuntu on phone is the ability for it to "scale up" to a full desktop system).

Fascinating, but the key problem will likely be differentiation from other mobile OSs out there. At this point, iOS and Android are largely similar to most consumers in most areas except for presentation. Given Microsoft's struggle in marketing Windows Phone (seriously, Live Tiles is why I'll switch from iOS or Android?), I see Canonical undergoing similar teething pains unless they have something really unique up their sleeve to differentiate themselves from iOS, Android, WP, Blackberry 10, Jolla, etc...

And again, you've got consumers tied down to Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store, so convincing those people who have built up a large library of purchased apps already to switch is another challenge.

I wish Canonical well, but with the base of people switching from old feature phones to smartphones shrinking month by month, I don't think they can count on mobile growth alone to get them where they want to be.

He explains why he believes it is an alternative for Android, but doesn't explain his stance on the iPhone. As I see it, both niches he wants to occupy are already happy with where they are - the iPhone for people who want a simpler user experience, and Android for the people who want the ability to customize their phone more. Apple and the various Android OEMs have the market pretty much covered as far as I can see. Free phones? Check. Midrange phones? Check. High-end phones? Check.

But everybody is trying to make a name for themselves in mobile these days, so I wish them the best of luck.

I appreciate having Linux around. An OS by propeller hats for the propeller hats. But it will not gain any traction in the consumer market. Ever. He's wasting his time and money.

Did you just insult every single geeky Linux user on this site by calling them "propeller hats"? If so, 1, youre an ass, 2 you have absolutely no idea what youre talking about and probably assume that Ubuntu still requires terminal commands to run anything worthwhile.

While I appreciate what Canonical is doing, I am somewhat skeptical that this will work, or even make it to market. Does the average consumer know who Canonical is? Probably not. But they know who Google, Apple, and Microsoft are. Also, as far as I've seen, connecting a smartphone to a monitor is cumbersome at best. Until 802.11ad is out and widespread, I don't see this getting any easier (and this assumes that 802.11ad gets off the ground, unlike WiDi...).

That said, among the Linux crowd, Canonical seems to be building up a bad wrap. But at least they're trying new things.

Honestly, I think the biggest ace up their sleeve is Steam. If they can be the sole vendor with Steam games available, that may attract the some of the PC gaming crowd. Or if they deliver a really good system for switching between phone and PC modes...

I appreciate having Linux around. An OS by propeller hats for the propeller hats. But it will not gain any traction in the consumer market. Ever. He's wasting his time and money.

Did you just insult every single geeky Linux user on this site by calling them "propeller hats"? If so, 1, youre an ass, 2 you have absolutely no idea what youre talking about and probably assume that Ubuntu still requires terminal commands to run anything worthwhile.

I appreciate having Linux around. An OS by propeller hats for the propeller hats. But it will not gain any traction in the consumer market. Ever. He's wasting his time and money.

Did you just insult every single geeky Linux user on this site by calling them "propeller hats"? If so, 1, youre an ass, 2 you have absolutely no idea what youre talking about and probably assume that Ubuntu still requires terminal commands to run anything worthwhile.

Meh, you're reading too much into "propeller hat" there.

And Ubuntu does still require terminal commands to fix the problems that arise when you go to run anything worthwhile. Unless you're lucky, which does happen.

He explains why he believes it is an alternative for Android, but doesn't explain his stance on the iPhone. As I see it, both niches he wants to occupy are already happy with where they are - the iPhone for people who want a simpler user experience, and Android for the people who want the ability to customize their phone more. Apple and the various Android OEMs have the market pretty much covered as far as I can see. Free phones? Check. Midrange phones? Check. High-end phones? Check.

But everybody is trying to make a name for themselves in mobile these days, so I wish them the best of luck.

Except for one thing youre missing that an above poster mentioned. No java. No overhead. Thats going to equate to better performance. That lag issue that some Android phones were criticized for? That will be gone completely most likely. And, you kind of nailed it right on the head without even realizing it. iPhone = Simple but locked down like Im a child, lol. Android = customizable EVERYTHING, but a little harder to use with more features. Ubuntu on a phone = FULL DESKTOP OS, simplicity of iPhone, customizable like Android and capable of using the hardware to its fullest. Sounds like the best of both worlds to me. Unless they cripple it somehow, I will have an Ubuntu phone to replace my Cyanogen Mod.

I appreciate having Linux around. An OS by propeller hats for the propeller hats. But it will not gain any traction in the consumer market. Ever. He's wasting his time and money.

Did you just insult every single geeky Linux user on this site by calling them "propeller hats"? If so, 1, youre an ass, 2 you have absolutely no idea what youre talking about and probably assume that Ubuntu still requires terminal commands to run anything worthwhile.

Meh, you're reading too much into "propeller hat" there.

And Ubuntu does still require terminal commands to fix the problems that arise when you go to run anything worthwhile. Unless you're lucky, which does happen.

The only problems that ever arise on my 10.04, are related to NEW HARDWARE. Ive actually not used the terminal in well over a year. The hardware problem, will not exist on a phone. Once its setup, itll be one of the most solid OS's youll ever use, just like the desktop version. Like I said, I think youre talking out your ass on this one. The desktop space is one thing, but the mobile space is 1980 all over again. There is room for more than just one more player.

"Before downloading the NDK, you should understand that the NDK will not benefit most apps. As a developer, you need to balance its benefits against its drawbacks. Notably, using native code on Android generally does not result in a noticable performance improvement, but it always increases your app complexity."

"native apps, whereas Android has the overhead of Java."That's a BIG plus for me.

Honestly, the Java overhead isn't really that bad. And the decreased development time more makes up for any added time you need to optimize small routines.

The biggest problem IME with Java on Android is that the JNI interfaces are a pain to use if you want to integrate with native code. That's one of the things that Microsoft has actually managed to do really well with the new system for Windows Phone 8. (Say what you want about the rest of their system, but anyone working on new phone architectures should spend some time looking at that stuff. Developing applications which run in both managed and native code is very streamlined, it's not trivial, but waaaay nicer than JNI.)

Personally I've been developing for mobile platforms since I started working. During that time I've tried quite a few platforms and one thing I'm quite convinced of is that you will have a very hard time developing applications efficiently completely in C/C++. This is about efficient development, not developing efficient applications, it's about getting your apps up and running quickly and getting them to customers quickly. If you are making/porting an app with custom everything then sure, pure native works, but unless you are making a game that's not a likely scenario. (There is nothing really stopping this in C/C++, it's just that you need a lot of solid frameworks around to get stuff done quickly. I would think Objective-C with Cocoa and all that.)

I do think that HTML5 can be a next step in this line though. And it might be able to do "both phone and computer" well. But doing that would require a lot of work to create an application framework which is based in HTML and JavaScript so you have all the boring framework in place. (Otherwise you're just back in the make everything custom in native camp.)

The only problems that ever arise on my 10.04, are related to NEW HARDWARE. Ive actually not used the terminal in well over a year. The hardware problem, will not exist on a phone. Once its setup, itll be one of the most solid OS's youll ever use, just like the desktop version. Like I said, I think youre talking out your ass on this one. The desktop space is one thing, but the mobile space is 1980 all over again. There is room for more than just one more player.

Whereas I've had to go into the terminal to fix problems on various releases (including 12.04) arising from odd hardware issues on a fresh install, odd software issues, new software installs, and new hardware installs.

Many of these could have been fixed by navigating in the GUI to the file to be edited, then editing the text in a GUI editor, this is true. Still, not much of a difference there.

I'd agree, though, that given a known hardware baseline (a phone) many/most of those problems could be avoided. Also, given a small, well curated software center, you could eliminate most of what remains. Which is to say I agree that Ubuntu could probably do better on a phone than on a desktop, in this regard.

Interesting (and always welcome) to see another potential player in the mobile OS space, but what will this offer that you can't get in either iOS, Android, Windows or BB? Why would this ever be successful beyond a tiny niche that can't support commercial releases of devices?

Good luck to them, if they can make it. I just don't see what is in it for the end users.

Ugh. No thanks. Next up, the "unityphone" ....I think the addition of Darth Vader yelling "noooooo" in Jedi might be a slightly worse idea, but not by much. I can hope that I'm wrong. Maybe if it doesn't totally turn me off at first sigjt, I'd give it a chance. OTOH, I suppose it can't be worse than a windows phone, so there is that going for it.

The problem is that Canonical has to woo the handset makers and the carriers before they can even get a chance with the user.

Motorola is Google's. Nokia is all but Microsoft's. Samsung is pretty tight with Google, and Lucky Goldstar seems to have thrown in with Android as well.

Sure, HTC seems to be willing to make a handset around any OS that'll boot, but is that enough? What's left? Pantech? Could they convince Lucky Goldstar or Samsung to take a chance? And will the carriers sell them?

Ever wanted to know what a company desperately clinging to relevancy in a changing computer market looks like?

Seriously though, this is hilariously myopic. Why would any handset vendor leave a known-good, highly visible OS with a MASSIVE app/content ecosystem like Android for Ubuntu? Because it's open? Get the fuck outta here. This will fail miserably, as it deserves to.

"Product X, which my company is making, with a release date of roughly a year from now will be the best product on the market!"

Yup, that always turns out rosy. Show us a product, show us why it's better and show us how it'll be delivered on good handsets that will appeal to the market. Otherwise the fluff about a product that appeals to all markets, works on all devices and will demolish everyone is just that, fluff.

The only problems that ever arise on my 10.04, are related to NEW HARDWARE. Ive actually not used the terminal in well over a year. The hardware problem, will not exist on a phone. Once its setup, itll be one of the most solid OS's youll ever use, just like the desktop version. Like I said, I think youre talking out your ass on this one. The desktop space is one thing, but the mobile space is 1980 all over again. There is room for more than just one more player.

Whereas I've had to go into the terminal to fix problems on various releases (including 12.04) arising from odd hardware issues on a fresh install, odd software issues, new software installs, and new hardware installs.

Many of these could have been fixed by navigating in the GUI to the file to be edited, then editing the text in a GUI editor, this is true. Still, not much of a difference there.

I'd agree, though, that given a known hardware baseline (a phone) many/most of those problems could be avoided. Also, given a small, well curated software center, you could eliminate most of what remains. Which is to say I agree that Ubuntu could probably do better on a phone than on a desktop, in this regard.

Ever wanted to know what a company desperately clinging to relevancy in a changing computer market looks like?

Seriously though, this is hilariously myopic. Why would any handset vendor leave a known-good, highly visible OS with a MASSIVE app/content ecosystem like Android for Ubuntu? Because it's open? Get the fuck outta here. This will fail miserably, as it deserves to.

Because I, the user, am going to install this whether my OEM or service provider like it or not.